Thank you! I’ve been experimenting with the formulas for each pigment (and hoping I’m not doing that Leonard da Vinci thing where I think I’m being ever so clever, then all my paint falls off after a few months). I’m also experimenting with different papers, and some of the pigments really flow and sing on the Fluid Cold Press paper–especially the malachite green and that yellow ochre in panel 2. Even the green earth (the background), which was such a pain to lay down on other papers that I was going to give up on it in watercolour form and focus on using it with tempera, behaves better than usual on this paper.

yeah, the flow is very smooth here for all of them. I like the texture the paper adds, too. and as for paint falling off, heh — at least if it did you wouldn’t be looking at a pissed-off patron’s soldiers! must have made for interesting lives, back in the day.

one of my favourite things about this comic is how it shows that regardless of time, technology, or costume, people just get on with their lives, much the same now as ever. you don’t see that much.

A comic about ancient Rome with no gladiatorial combats or Caligula/Nero-style orgies is a sort of ridiculously narrow niche, but I’m always more interested in people getting on with their lives.

Much more imperial stuff is bound to happen in chapter V, but I can’t promise many gladiators.

I was recently reading about wealthy Renaissance-era patrons potentially getting slowly poisoned in their desire for the brightest and swankiest pigments in commissioned work. Bad for the painter, but not so good for the patron who sat around or ate under a bright yellow or bright red or bright green portrait, even if the paint didn’t flake off. Arsenic: the gift that keeps on giving.

A few weeks ago, the New Yorker ran an article about the German art printer Gerhard Steidl. He doesn’t like the look and texture of coated paper, so he uses thicker, expensive color ink on uncoated paper, even though it costs more and takes twice as long to set. Everything can’t be done that way, but it sure makes me happy that someone does do it that way.

In my teen years and thereabouts, I only wanted hot-press/plate surfaces and smooth, non-granulating inks. I’m not completely converted, but I’m enjoying the way paints behave on certain papers, and enjoying that the hand-made paints are actually behaving like real paint. I think they even cost less 🙂